


Blue Masquerade

by missroserose



Category: Lost Boys (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood Drinking, M/M, Seduction, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 18:07:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14857643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missroserose/pseuds/missroserose
Summary: One vampire is dead.  The others are preparing to attack the Emerson house.  It's going to be bloody, and people will die.Michael can't let that happen.





	Blue Masquerade

It’s early evening, the sultry air still holding on to the heat of the day, as Michael’s feet find the entry to the lair. Picking his way past the warning signs, the barricades, he feels the blessed cool of the earth rise up to meet him, shielding him from the devastating sun. But the ground is uneven, and a deceptive patch of sand shifts under his feet; he gives a yelp as he slides, falling backward even as his fingers scrabble for a rock, a patch of grass, anything to halt his forward slide. He barely manages to get his feet under him as the ground drops away, as he lands hard on his legs, goes sprawling onto his back.

Even before he’s gathered his thoughts, a figure looms in the shadows. “Traitor.” Paul’s face, grime-streaked, blonde hair stringy. His voice hisses through the cave, echoes providing a chorus of snake-like accents that trigger a fear response in Michael’s hindbrain. He scrabbles backward, using the cliff wall behind him (his nemesis a moment ago, now his savior) to get to his feet.

The long-haired vampire is advancing, but Michael finds his stance; there will be far worse than Paul to face down before the night is through. He takes off his sunglasses, sizes Paul up. “Let me pass.”

Paul tackles him. No friendly hazing, this; fangs out, an animal roar as he hits Michael with the force of a semi-truck. They tumble together some little ways; Michael has the advantage in size, but Paul has recently fed, and grief and anger lend him strength. Through leverage and luck, Michael manages to throw the vampire off of him, scuffles backward to find his feet again, readying for the next attack, when Dwayne melts out of the shadows, places a restraining hand on Paul’s shoulder.

“Enough. David wants him.”

Paul still looks ready to spring. Dwayne tightens his hand. “Paul. Enough.”

Slowly, Paul’s fangs recede, his features becoming more human, his face showing a depth of grief that Michael wouldn’t have credited him capable. “We were going to live forever,” he says, his voice bereft. Dwayne slips his arms around his brother, turning him away, consoling him in an undertone as Paul’s shoulders shake.

Michael edges past the two of them, discomfited. Dwayne raises his head, and gives Michael a look more eloquent than a thousand pictures. _I would kill you myself if you were worth my time._ Or maybe _I’m only letting you live because I know he’ll do so much worse to you than I ever could._ Or perhaps, simply, _You poor bastard._

“He’s waiting,” is all he says. 

It’s a better reception than he deserves. Michael nods and picks his way through the detritus of the lair, peers into the gloom. The darkness seems to part before him, curtainlike, and he feels David’s presence deep in his gut long before he can actually see him.

“Well. If it isn’t our _brother_.” The words have his usual sardonic edge and the irony with which he rolls the syllables of the last word is unmistakable. Even before rounding the last pile of debris, Michael can picture him. The insouciant posture, sprawled over the chair; the not-quite-smile that could be friendly, or hostile, or completely indifferent. The lines of his legs, one draped over the arm of the chair at an angle that should be uncomfortable but only manages to demonstrate his complete lack of care. “What brings you here, turncoat?” A razor-thin smile, a cocked eyebrow—question. Invitation. Challenge.

Michael can feel every part of his body reacting to David’s presence—his heart speeding, his focus narrowing, even the hair prickling at the back of his neck seeming to point in David’s direction. _What is this strange game you're playing?_ He struggles to keep his tone casual. “Family turns up at the most inconvenient times.” 

A pause; Michael supposes, somewhere in the back part of his mind that’s not overwhelmed by the terror of the moment, that an immortal has no real sense of urgency about anything, let alone something so petty as conversation. “Is Star coming? Or is she no longer part of our _family_?” The last word comes out a sneer.

A sensory image of Star, so vivid Michael catches his breath ( _her skin soft beneath his hands, the smell of her hair, the small sound she makes as he kisses her_ ). He blinks it away. Focus. “She wants out.”

“And you?” David examines his nails; from his tone, he could be discussing the weather. “What brings you back, traitor?”

Unlike Paul, David speaks the word with little weight, but Michael feels the effect, a metaphorical shifting of the ground beneath him, a flutter of adrenaline as his body informs him of the stakes of this conversation. “You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.” David refuses to rise to the bait.

A breath in, a breath out. Michael gauges his likelihood of surviving the next few minutes, and finds the odds dismal, but he’s committed now. He tries a careless smile. It fades; there’s no way to say the next bit without some piece of truth. He plants both feet on the ground, inhales. “You.”

That gets David’s attention. He goes still, his focus caught, as intense on Michael as Michael’s on him. 

Michael swallows against a dry throat, continues. “I betrayed you. Now you’re planning to attack my home, murder my family. Yes?”

David could be carved of limestone, his posture is so still. “Is it murder to kill in self-defense?”

“They’re my family.”

“They _were_ your family.” In one sudden motion, David rises from the chair, advances on him. “You’ve moved on. Your family is here.”

Amidst the sudden surge of fear, somewhere in the center of his swirling thoughts, a realization clicks into place in Michael’s head. “You set me up.” He fights to keep his voice even, his tone steady. “I could have killed my brother, and you would have been happy to see it.” His skin is flushing; he can practically feel the heat radiating off his skin in the cool underground air.

“Yes.” David’s sudden grin is feral, regretless; he advances another step. “And you would be one of us, now. Not caught between worlds.” 

That expression settles itself deep in Michael’s gut; a lump of ice, cold as his skin is warm, cold as David’s blue eyes. “You could have warned me.” His voice is quiet, almost muted.

Another step, the distance made more intimate by David’s predatory gaze, the way his slight disadvantage in height is meaningless next to his sheer hypnotic presence. “You have to make the leap yourself, Michael. Listen to your instincts.”

Michael’s heart speeds as David comes close, and that same back part of his mind wonders if the vampire can hear it. “And if my instincts tell me to kill my loved ones in cold blood?”

“That’s life, traitor-brother. Predator or prey. Family or food.” The grin again, just for a moment, as his eyes flick down to Michael’s throat, then back up, the glance obscene in its plainness. “Although their blood is never cold.”

That blue-eyed ice spreads throughout Michael’s torso, paralyzes him. He opens his mouth, closes it again; David watches his face, his expression unreadable.

A moment, and the vampire leans forward, his voice soft, almost beguiling. “You’re hanging from the bridge, Michael. The train is passing overhead. Your grip is slipping.” Another step closer. Another. “You know this only ends one way. Why do you continue to grasp?”

Michael’s breath is coming short; he struggles to draw enough to speak. “I’m not a killer.”

“Aren’t you?” David’s path swerves, and he walks around behind Michael. “Marko would disagree.” 

The tone, the carefully calculated neutrality, socks Michael right in the gut. “I didn’t know!” He turns his head, trying to catch the vampire in his peripheral vision. “I didn’t think those kids would actually—would be able to—” Fear and anger and guilt gnaw at him in turn. “I just wanted—” He stops, mired in the quicksand of his own conflicting thoughts.

“To be the hero?” David’s voice, behind his head, gently mocking. “To save the girl?” He steps closer, the anger in his tone heavily leashed. “Think truly, brother. What is a hero but a killer by another name?”

“I thought you were immortal.” Michael’s stomach has grown wings; he feels it hovering, turning somersaults somewhere near his throat.

“We’re strong, but not invulnerable. The world will hunt us down, like your brother and his little friends. Even those we might think are ‘family’.” David’s voice is dangerously close to showing real emotion; a brief pause, barely a beat, and he continues. “Immortality comes at a price, traitor-brother.” Another step closer, his breath stirring Michael’s hair. “My blood is in your veins. So tell me. Are you family? Or food?”

Memories surface, play out behind Michael’s eyes, the emotions wrenching and immediate. His mother, her face puzzled and angry as she reaches out to her changed son. Sam, the betrayal and terror in his eyes as he realizes his brother’s transformation. Star, her face pale and wan after her ordeal, as he kisses her goodbye.

Star. Oh, Star.

_Where are you going?_

__

__

_I have to go back. Otherwise he’ll kill my family. And you. Everyone I love._

_He’ll never let you go._

His unspoken response, as he turns away: _I know._

Sam. Sam, who drives him crazy. Sam, whom he almost killed. 

Sam, his younger brother who loves him, no matter what blood runs in his veins.

Blinking away the images once more, Michael turns, sees the carefully blank look on David’s face; of course, David’s watching them too, feeling what Michael feels. Michael wonders how long it’s been since David felt anything close to love. Wonders, beneath that, at how close the two of them are, how charged the scant inches of air between them.

Slowly, he unzips his jacket, tosses it aside; the skin of his neck feels heated, vulnerable. His pulse beats at the hollow of his throat, and he sees the fractional movement of David’s lips parting, the paling of his eyes as they’re inexorably drawn to it.

“Take it,” Michael says, his voice quiet but firm. “Take your blood back, and mine with it. Let me repay the debt. Just leave them alone.”

A fleeting pause, a breath; another infinitely long moment that ends quickly. David’s hands reach for Michael, and he prepares himself, expects any moment to feel his throat torn out, his lifeblood gushing forth—but those long fingers only entwine themselves in his hair, draw him in close, tilt his head back, tender as a lover. “Think carefully what you’re offering, Michael,” David murmurs, and Michael can feel himself trembling, this strange gentleness somehow all the more frightening. “This is not a hero’s death.”

“Please. Take it.” His eyes close, his voice barely more than whispers; every part of his body is hyper-aware, clinging to this last shred of life before it disappears. “I can’t be what you want me to be.”

Even then, David moves slowly, achingly slowly; perhaps taunting him, or perhaps extending his own anticipation. His face moves close to Michael’s neck; his breath against Michael’s burning skin is a sweet miniature agony in and of itself, and Michael feels his skin break into gooseflesh, the trembling become more acute. For a moment, it’s only David’s lips, brushing ever so delicately against the thin skin of Michael’s throat, and Michael hangs suspended between terror and wanting, poised in the exquisite hunger of the moment. 

Then fangs sink in to the vein, and he cries out—in pain, yes, and in a strange sense of deep-seated longing fulfilled; a feeling of completion so intensely physical he’s unsure momentarily if his mind can even grasp it. His pulse and his breath fill his ears, each gasp, each throb a taffy-pull into the next; even as his heart races, the space between each thrum grows subjectively longer, and he sees the gap in between, the awful empty space. That expanse, growing larger and larger with each passing year, until it feels as if he’s nothing but that emptiness, those momentary flashes of humanity growing fewer and further between, longing and loneliness overwhelming him when he sees—

Michael convulses, sucks in a breath, comes back to his body with a shock. David is holding him, looks at him, his eyes halfway between blue and inhuman yellow, his mouth smeared with blood, his face still blank and yet suddenly, utterly readable, that all-too-human heartache written plain for Michael to see. Michael is giddy with adrenaline, with that image of himself in David’s mind, with the shock of sudden understanding.

David’s eyes narrow; his lips part, as if to say something cutting.

Michael reaches behind David’s head and pulls him into a kiss.

David makes a muffled sound, whether of protest or surprise or satisfaction neither of them can say. Michael can taste himself on David’s lips, full and complex, adrenaline adding a fine grace note to the subtle bouquet; he feels his own fangs grow, and he bites David’s lip, hungry for more. The richness of David’s blood enters his mouth, entwines with his own, and the blend is so heady Michael feels drunk just on the taste. David hisses in his throat, and suddenly his fingers tighten in Michael’s hair, pull his head back, break the connection.

They pause for a single, electric moment, half-transformed, and Michael is certain David will end him here and now for his arrogance. Then the vampire lets go of him, steps back. Speaks, in a quiet authoritative tone that holds no trace of sarcasm or doubt. “Take that shirt off.”

Michael complies; is hardly certain he has any choice in the matter. He feels strangely light and heavy, sleepy and alert. Perhaps it’s the blood loss, or perhaps it’s the knowledge he’s unlikely to see the morning. What matters is David, his eyes on Michael’s arms as he pulls his crewneck over his head; that look as he stands half-naked in the rapidly fading light, as if Michael were a young god. That sense of approval, of desire, washing over him warm and hot by turns.

David steps behind him again, wraps one arm around Michael’s chest, brushes Michael’s hair off to one side; his fingers leave a trail of supernovae down Michael’s neck and shoulder, the line of his chest, the taut plane of his belly, before coming to rest on his hipbone. “Beg me again.” His voice is soft, commanding, his free hand pulling Michael’s hips back against his own. “Beg me, and I’ll show you what I want you to be.”

Michael’s eyes are heavy-lidded, his breaths labored; every place where David touches him is tingling with its own set of urgent signals, crossing and re-crossing throughout his skin. “Fuck yes. Please. Please do it.” His eyes close again as David’s fingers trace the line of his jeans, undo the button. He’s painfully hard, and that first contact of those cool fingers around his searing flesh makes him convulse again, violent; only David’s preternatural strength keeps him upright. “Yes. God. Please, David,” he breathes, whimpers, begs; wishes for more words, words that can describe the everything that he wants, all at once, here, now.

Then David is stroking him, and the pleasure is nestling deep within his hips, beginning to build. His body has become a leaky vessel; the sensation seeps into his gut, his ribcage, his chest, pressing its way into his mind, blanking out his thoughts, profoundly and terrifyingly soul-clearing. “Fly with me, Michael,” David whispers in his ear, and sinks his fangs deep into Michael’s shoulder, the pain searing through Michael’s overtaxed nerves, his head jerking up and back, a short sharp scream—

—and then they are, pressed together, flying through the night, buoyed by the growing intensity of their combined pleasure. They see Santa Carla from above, its glittering lights and the rides on its boardwalk a sparkling line of jewels against the dark, their territory, their home. The scene changes, and they’re hunting, scenting for a lone, unwary figure in the dark, the thrill of the chase setting fire to their unified blood. Caught in a fight with a local gang, the two of them back to back, feeling the shared rush of adrenaline, as certain of their victory as they are of the feast that awaits them afterward. Dancing in a crowded nightclub, drunk on fresh blood, pressed together, breath and sweat mingling as the bass thumps through the crowd. Racing together towards Hudson’s Bluff, urging their bikes on faster—”Keep up!” David yells, an order, a challenge—laughing maniacally as the edge approaches, as the ache in Michael’s hips grows sharper and more urgent, as his grip begins to slip, fingernails digging desperately—”Please—” —breath ragged, uncertain anymore what he’s asking, where their joint reality ends, where or what or who he is. “I can’t—I can’t hold on—”

_Let go_. David’s fangs are still deep in Michael’s shoulder, but the motion of their bodies together is relentless, and his words resound through Michael’s psyche, half threat, half atavistic lure. _You offered yourself to me_. His breaths are tattered gasps, the rush of his heartbeat fills his ears with the sound of great and terrible wings. _Let me have you. All of you._

Lost in David’s arms and in their world, Michael surrenders, roaring over the edge, his voice mingling with David’s as the orgasm rips through through their linked perceptions. Those arms are iron, pressing David’s body against his as they arch together, as their communion explodes in a firework of shadows, as Michael’s body spills come on the ground; they hold him as he breathes heavily, once, twice, goes limp. Slowly, David brings him down to his knees; Michael shudders, makes a small sound, collapses backward, his head lolling on David’s shoulder as the vampire licks away the trickle of blood from his wounds.

“You didn’t finish.” Michael licks his dry lips, then tries to complete the sentence, his throat hoarse. “Me. You didn’t kill me.”

“We’re a long way from finished yet.” David’s response seems to come from far away. “You’re mine now.”

“Yes,” Michael answers, marveling from a distance at how much truth can fit in such a single short word. He would shiver, but he’s not certain he has the strength. “So cold.”

David holds him, fresh-fed flesh warm around Michael, until he recovers a little. The vampire helps him to his feet, buttons his pants. Half-stumbling, Michael leans on him as they ascend to the cave entrance; the twilight air is cooling rapidly, and the breeze is chill on his sweaty skin. “My jacket.”

“Breathe, Michael. Breathe deep.” 

Michael obeys, closes his eyes, breathes—and there, on the wind, he catches the scent. A young boy, early teens, just down the slope from them. Alone. Sam’s age. Perhaps it’s Sam, come to look for him. The cold, the weakness, the haze over his senses; all of it seems to fall away as his entire awareness rivets towards that scent.

That last, distant part of his brain, rapidly receding as instinct takes over: _Please don’t let that be Sam_. 

His fangs grow. The world snaps into sharp focus.

Michael leaps.

David smiles.


End file.
